There is Another Version of the Tale
by Nyah
Summary: There are things it's safer not to know: A) fairytales are real and B) where Killian Jones sleeps.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **No earning, no owning, only dabbling

**There is Another Version of the Tale**

"What's wrong?"

She sat on the couch, prepared to lie. There were a million things that would sound truer than the truth. "Killian has a book."

"What?"

"Exactly what I said. Hook has a book." Emma fiddled with the handle on one of Mary Margaret's perpetual cups of tea and muttered, "It's sounds even dumber when you rhyme it like that."

Mary Margaret's face rounded into a grin that broke into a short laugh.

"What?" Emma said, less amused. Incredulity was not exactly unexpected but she'd sought Mary Margaret out since she might actually listen instead of just looking at Emma like she'd mildly lost her mind.

"Well, honey," Mary Margaret said and because she was an actual fairytale princess the hilarity in her voice was barely noticeable. "_Killian_ has a pirate ship and a hook for a hand and eyeliner. So a book seems like the least of our worries."

Emma liked that Mary Margaret said "our worries" like this conversation might be about the bigger picture and not just about how some guy Emma's been faffing around about for quite a while was being weird. "Okay, but those are normal Hook things. And all of a sudden, you know, we're at Granny's the other night and he's got this book that he's…." She'd been about to say "hunched over" but that wasn't true, was it? He'd really been more sitting back staring at it, turning a page now and then. Like he was focused but also sort of sick about it?

"Reading instead of paying attention to you?" Mary Margaret guessed in the wake of Emma's thoughtful pause.

"No," Emma said levelly, trying to cut through Mary Margaret's knowing smile even as her own objective, former bounty hunter's mind noted that there was truth there despite the denial. He hadn't been paying attention to her. And that was weird. Objectively. He was the guy who'd flirted with her so doggedly from the beginning that it had taken her too long to realize he was serious and now…. Well. Now Killian had a book.

"This is really bothering you." Mary Margaret said, leaning forward, her voice dropping in pitch, coloring the exact shade of alarm Emma was feeling. It was Mary Margaret's greatest charm, this deep well of empathy.

"Henry had a book. I…ugh,… I pay attention to books now."

Mary Margaret nodded, all mirth gone from her face. "Is it like Henry's book?"

Emma thought of the book of fairy tales, it's heavy pages and rich inks and the warm scent that spread like a lit candle whenever it was opened. "I don't know." Hook's book had been plainer, she thought, newer, perhaps. "I'm having a hard time remembering it."

Mary Margaret's brows lifted. Memory troubles were Storybrooke's endemic strain of the common cold, plentiful and vexing but not often fatal. "Emma, Hook is no—"

"Prince Charming?"

"Hah. Yes. I was going to say angel, but, yes, he's not that either but he's proved himself, as much as none of us wanted to trust him, he _has _proved himself. You know that."

"So I should just let it go."

"I wouldn't go that far. I'm saying the mature thing to do is talk to him, ask him about it. Maybe a book is just a book" Mary Margaret sat back with a small smile lighting her eyes. "It's what I would do I were you and he were, you know."

"Prince Charming." Emma says as dryly as she can manage. That she resents the implication goes unsaid.

"Right."

"Right," Emma stands, nodding to herself and brushing dust that isn't there from her hands. "Ask him. I tried that, believe it or not." Sort of. She'd asked him once what was wrong and he'd evaded.

"And?"

Emma shook her head. "Long story, he said."

"Oh, Emma."

"What?"

"You're going to steal it."

#

Hook, it turned out, was living on a boat. It took Emma all of ten minutes to find out which of Storybrooke's citizens had lent him the space and find the vessel in question. He'd brought her back and now, it seemed, there was an unprecedented amount of good will surrounding the pirate.

The late summer sun was blazing it's last across the harbor as she knocked on the door to the ship's cabin. The door swung open momentarily and leaning as she was into the stairwell, Hook looked up at her as if from a hole in the ground. "Swan," he said with something of his usual good humor, stepping back in invitation. "Tracked me down, have you? To what do I owe the effort?"

"Effort? Hah. Pirate. Marina," Emma waved, taking in their surroundings. "If you're avoiding me you're going to have to try harder." She braced herself on the low doorframe, taking the steep stairs with care.

He smiled back at her over his shoulder and she stopped short on the bottom step. His grin was like an invitation to the best adventure she'd never had and she remembered suddenly why she hadn't sought him out at home before. There are things it's safer not to know: A) fairytales are real and B) where Killian Jones sleeps.

"Me? Avoid you, Swan? If I were on speaking terms with any of the gods still you'd be hearing laughter from heaven just now."

He was putting on a good show, seemed more like himself than he had in days. But the cabin wasn't exactly huge and there, open on the far pillow of a neatly made up bed was the book. Emma's eyes slid over the broad pages, finally swinging back to meet Killian's. A new expression flickered across his eyes, like he felt someone walk across his grave. She could already feel him preparing to lie.

"Nice place," She said quickly, lamely. His cabin was an efficient table and chairs, bed, the merest semblance of a kitchen, and as devoid of personal affects as her apartment in Storybrooke once was.

"My thanks." Hook accepted the hollow compliment with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, it was either a stance of confidence or uncertainty with him. He was an adventurer who carried his home on his back. With nothing of interest in the cabin to preen over, he looked a bit lost.

"I take it back," Emma said, not quite playfully but with less urgency than she felt. _He doesn't mean to stay, _she thought and with the thought, promptly deserted all plans for tact. "What's this?" She crossed the diminutive distance between the entrance and Hook's bed, but found herself stopped short against a shoulder, view obscured by an out flung arm. It was the one with the hook.

"That would be my bed, Swan. I'm surprised you don't recognize it. Not much, I know, but you're usually a bit sharper than that. Regina's memory charm did a number on you, did it? Well, can't be helped."

The words sounded like Hook's but they were coming out far too fast. Hook was charming at his best, sly when up to something, taciturn with his back against the wall. Now he was nearly babbling.

Emma felt her pulse rise in her ears, quick and strong. For once it had little to do with the proximity of the pirate and everything to do with the way he took a step back and out of her personal space.

She stepped forward so that her nose nearly bumped up against his chest. The sudden flood of his scent, unchanged over all these months and mistakes, washed over her with the potency of a memory potion. She was wrapped, for the briefest moment, in jungle heat and the blazing stars of the Neverland.

"Swan," he said, chest caving in, retreating meager centimeters to a safer distance from her. "I implore you, please do not touch that book."

She nearly reached out with magic, employed that eager new limb that was only just learning its own strength and grace. But his hook still filled her vision. She remembered his face when she'd vanished at the diner, remembered how, despite his encouragement, he'd lost a lot to magic.

"Okay." Emma steeled herself, stepping back with such an effort it was like watching someone else make the choice. "Okay."

"Okay?" His arms were still raised like a shield.

"Okay, I won't touch the book."

"Are you feeling alright, Swan?" He asked, already trying to make light, still fearful.

"Not really," she replied. "Are you?"

She felt it again, he was preparing to lie. _Me? I'm always alright, love. I'm Captain Hook_, he'd say.

His arms came down slowly. Emma felt the floor rock gently in the wake of a passing ship. "Not at all, love," he said finally. "Not at all."

She would have taken his hand then. Maybe. Perhaps she would have considered that small amount of comfort for both of them if she wasn't so acutely aware of the distance he'd put between them, his chest caved in, the backs of his legs pressed against the edge of the bunk.

"I need you to tell me what's going on, Killian," she said as firmly as she could, though all her instincts were telling her he was afraid. _What's wrong with you? What happened last year? Where's your ship?_ "Start with the book."

"It's only...think of it as a, what's it, library book, Swan."

"A library book?"

"I borrowed it."

"Borrowed or stole?"

"Borrowed! Please, Swan, I'm not stupid enough to steal from him."

"Him who? There are very few people you are not stupid enough to steal from, Hook."

"Hurts, a bit that does-Swan!"

His dodging had outlasted her patience and she made another grab for the book and was again rebuffed quite forcefully. His strong right hand held her back nearly as effectively as his tone of voice. "It belongs to the Dream King."


	2. Chapter 2

_The Skinny: Hook has a book. Emma pays attention to books these days. Take off from the diner scene when Emma vanishes the hook. see disclaimer in earlier parts. Enjoy._

2.

"It's a long story."

"Best ones are."

"It's a very long story."

"Well, I've got from now until my mother goes into labor so unless you can come up with a plan to beat Zelena or you want to give me a look at that book, I'm all ears."

"Alright, Emma...this place, Storybrooke, is an oddity, am I right? It's peopled by stories you tell each other out in the rest of this land?" Hook stepped back from her, dropping his arms. He might lack all but a drop magical blood but, it seemed, he knew the first rule of magic: there is power in naming a thing.

"Yeah, more or less," Emma conceded. "With, you know, a curse thrown in here and there, that's about it."

"And the rest of this world, it's like your New York? The people believe in one reality, solid all the way through. Barring a few of the old deities still kicking around, of course, And these new ones you've invented to fill the space?"

"You've seen it. There's no magic out there, Killian, not like Storybrooke," Emma shrugged. "It took me months to believe."

Hook laughed then. "Emma Swan! Believing only in the Internet and Jesus and GPS! Hard to believe the savior was such an innocent." Any hint of innuendo had died in his mouth and Emma felt her brows lockdown like her own muscles were dragging her back to the task at hand: the book, the curse, Henry, Henry, Henry.

"Come on, Hook. Sit, talk." She herself took a seat at the small table with its two chairs bolted to the floor.

"Not to point too fine a point on it but I'm not the one who keeps interrupting."

"Well then stop asking me questions."

"Aye, aye, back to it." He snapped a salute like a wink before sitting opposite her. "My point, love, is once your world was not so different from mine, perhaps. In my land there are still places off the edge of the map, softer places that drift to and fro, unbound by ink. They are the places of sailor's sweetest dreams." Hook stood and switched a lamp on as the last of the weak sunlight faded in the small windows. He retrieved the book from his bed. "Fiddler's Green, we call it, the green flash you might see standing a night's watch with a mate but only talk of a year later and a few cups deep."

Hook was looking past her to the darkening windows now and, not for the first time Emma nearly said, where's your ship, Killian? where's your crew? But he sat again, tucking the book under his good arm, tenser this time underneath the lazy charm and she thought it better to let him tell the story his way before he decided to run.

"As a boy, I sailed with a merchant ship called Dancer's Delight before following my brother into the king's navy. The captain was the adventurous sort with more balls than brains."

"Sounds like your kind of guy," Emma cut in before she could help herself.

"Yours as well, no? I'd be happy to show you my credentials."

Emma raised a hand in warning, sparks glittering between her fingertips. But any show of his old flare seemed to put her at ease these days and the near-smile on her lips probably killed the threat.

"In any case," Hook said, glancing at his left hand with feigned suspicion. "He had a penchant for straying from the known routes, sailing too far from the land by stars that had barely been charted. We were sailing the seas of the New World too late one summer and a storm came upon us, as they do. I was lost to the sea, tossed overboard with so many of my fellows that Dancer's Delight wasn't even left a skeleton crew to see her home. She never made landfall again.

"In the end, I alone was spared and returned home, though my path …. Storms have strange currents, Swan." Hook let his head fall back to rest on the wall. Emma could swear the quality of light in the room shifted, the bulb shivering like candle flame. "I was born upon one for miles, it seemed. Dragged under time and again, certain each time I was about to drown when the selfsame current buoyed me up to sweet air. The current carried me, finally, out of the storm's path and I emerged in flat water. I would have died there, treading water on a becalmed sea but for the bits of jetsam the current deposited alongside me . Like manna from heaven, they were: a few planks, a bit of mast, not enough to bear my weight but enough to keep my head above water.

"I kept awake through the rest of that terrible day and the night that followed, fixing my eyes on the stars, waiting for that strange green light I'd never witnessed but heard old ship hands swear on like their mothers' own names. Some say Fiddler's Green is only for men who have sailed 50 years or more but I kept my ears aloft anyway and listened for the music.

"When the sun rose again I was near frozen and already feeling the first madness of thirst. I had laid my head down against the driftwood, wondering if I'd sleep and drown or drink the sea water. So close to the water's surface was I that I heard the change in the waves before I saw the shore.

"And what a shore she was: craggy and mist covered but boasting of broad beaches and laden with tropical fruits, like the bastard child of home and all the places I'd ever been. I laid down in the greenest meadow you've ever seen and woke under a blanket of butterflies. There were fat oysters with pearls the size of a man's thumbnail and you couldn't scoop water from a spring without panning up gold and diamonds, already cut and faceted.

"I lived on the island for years, it seemed, well fed and content but for the shores I glimpsed from the cliff tops. There was a whole chain of islands with shores crowning in the mist. So I built a vessel, not so crude as it might have been, for I had time and timber aplenty. Indeed, the trees in that place cut straight and true and regrew to their full height after a day's labors. And I was not alone in that place, at least not always. Men would appear on the shores, the sort of men I knew well: rough-tongued and wind burnt from the sea. They seemed to blink in and out of that place for an hour or so at once, a bit dazed but happy enough to help a boy build a boat for exploring.

"But when I took my boat to the water, prepared to strike for the nearest shore, the sea fell away like it was nothing but sky and I nearly lost my boat to the abyss. I was disheartened, to be sure, and for the first time felt restless in that place. But among my companions that day was a man I'd met many times by then. He was a sailcloth maker who'd never left land but dreamed every night, he said, of the sea. We were watching a herd of the horses native to that land stampede to a cliff's edge. The beasts were the purest white and had wings like seraphim and would fly off into the mists. Before the boat, I'd thought of catching one to ride.

"My friend, the sailcloth maker, had another idea. We should make a sail from the beasts' feathers and float right off the edge of the world, he said. I was wary of the plan, suspecting that if this place had any gods of its own, surely these creatures were sacred. But my friend pointed out the jewel-colored fish and the musical fowl that made up my suppers and I conceded.

"In the end, Isaac made only a small sail, one to fit the boat I'd built from the enchanted trees. It was just big enough for a strong man or, perhaps, a slight old man and a boy that was just beginning to try on the dimensions of a man. I asked him why he didn't weave one big enough for a grand ship so we could sail like kings across the sky. He just shrugged and said he was here less and less these days and so, time was short. Which was certainly the truth.

"We launched the boat from the beach and the sail took to the wind right away, pulling us out into the mist that had always been clouds, I suppose. We flew over the whole of my island, which, I'm sure you've guessed, was not my island at all but the great green flash itself. There were mountains I'd yet to cross and on the other side, a valley packed to the gills with good cheer. I heard the fiddle song from far off and the men cheered as we passed overhead, sailing on.

"The places I saw...it would take a lifetime and more to tell. Islands hanging in the sky like stars. We came upon the Neverland in our travels. I recognized it from a far, having been there in my boyhood dreams. I've been thinking of that first voyage, of late. I think no grown man or woman had been to those shores until Isaac and I landed there. Neverland is the place children go in dreams and I was a boy yet but Isaac…. When he climbed from the boat cracks spread from his footfalls as if he were walking on brittle clay instead of white sand. I insisted we set sail at once but I wonder, Swan, I wonder."

Emma took a long time to react, realizing too late that he'd broken from the tale to address her. Hook had only glanced at her occasionally in the telling of his tale, mostly looking away, features distant as if what he was relating was one half adventure and one half war story. "You wonder if you broke Neverland?"

"Peter Pan broke Neverland, to be sure. But perhaps I opened the fissure that let him in, carried the rot in on my ship, all unwitting. That place has cursed me ever since, for certain."

"You were just a kid."

Hook's met hers for the briefest moment she saw both the boy he had been and the man he was now, centuries old and so often enchanted.

"Apologies, I lost the thread of it there for a moment. We sailed for a long, long time until it couldn't be avoided any longer. Isaac had been with me for months in the boat when before he'd stayed no longer than anyone else, a few minutes, an hour here and there, the duration of a dream. I told him I thought he must have died in the real world. 'Ah, Killian,' he said. 'You say that as if there is only one.'

"We flew back to my island and though Isaac insisted he was no sailor, the men in the valley pulled him eagerly from my ship as we drifted overhead. They slapped him on the back and filled his cup with rum and chanted his name like an old friend. I saw faces I knew amongst them and they waved me down but I had not yet earned my peace, I suppose, so I sailed on, my sail full of wind and that fiddle song that never stops.

"I returned to my own beach, exploring, adventuring meeting men who dreamed of a sailor's heaven. Even the odd woman now and then, rare, rough lasses who carved out brief lives for themselves among the sailors. One day, on a whim, I stepped into the sea as I hadn't done since the storm. Where there had been currents of air lapping at my ship, there was water and I swam. Not far from the shore I was caught in a strong undertow and truly swept out to sea. I took the journey to Fiddler's Green in reverse, ultimately pulled from the sea by a merchant ship that told me of the demise of Dancer's Delight and all souls aboard in that very region five years before.

"I had a pocket full of pearls from my island and I handed one to the captain who was an old sea dog, surely on his last leg. He asked no questions about how I came to be lost at sea. Not long after, I took a commission with the navy, working my way through the ranks until I sailed with my brother, as his first mate. It was drudgery, to tell the truth. I had more sea water than blood, by then, but I had captained a ship in the stars and endless inspection and bean counting sat ill with me.

But my brother's ship, ah, Swan, it was like coming home. I knew the scent of the wood, they way it creaked and moaned with the tide. It was my own ship, but we had both grown. My brother got his orders from the king to sail for a distant shore. And we carried a sail made from Pegasus's own feathers, it was said. The rumor was a master sailcloth maker in the Mediterranean had woven the sail as his dying work."

Emma wrinkled her nose, trying to suss out the truth of the statement.

"Some say I started the rumor myself," Hook deadpanned. "After that comes Neverland and Pan and all the rest. But, about the book, to understand the book, you had to know the story of the ship." He placed the book in question on the table, closed so Emma could see the cover. _A Navigator's Guide to the Borderlands _by I. J. Bourdoukakis. "You see, she was born in dreams."


End file.
